


stumbling, stumbling

by tunemyart



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, season one schmoop about Xena re-remembering how to love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-31 06:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: Gabrielle has a hangover. Xena might be in love. Immediately post season one's "Altared States".





	stumbling, stumbling

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this as part of an early days!trilogy of which "death and other women's fears" is the only other one I've put up. I decided to hold off on this one because I don't actually in my heart of hearts believe that Xena started - knowingly - to fall in love with Gabrielle until her eyes were opened by the existential crisis of "Is There a Doctor in the House?", but then on second thought I was like, you know, nobody really cares. So here ya go! You'll get the other piece of the early!days trilogy around Halloween, because lesbian vampires. Enjoy!

If someone had told Xena a year ago that she’d soon be ambling along through the countryside, armyless by choice, with only a few meager possessions, her horse, and one extremely hungover young woman, she’d have laughed in their face.

“Ow,” muttered Gabrielle as she stumbled over a rock for the third time.

But that was life, Xena supposed as she reached out to steady her, and couldn’t bring herself to feel even a little sorry for it. “Bet you’re glad you traded out the long skirts.”

Gabrielle groaned with feeling. “You’re telling me. I can’t believe I ever wore those out here,” she said, before taking notice of their surroundings for the first time since they’d left Anteus and looking around at Xena suspiciously. “Wait, this looks familiar. Are we going in circles?” 

“No,” Xena assured her succinctly. “How’s your head?”

“Still pounding.”

Wordlessly, Xena offered her the water skin again; and again, Gabrielle drank, but not without sighing heavily first. 

“I’m going to float away if you keep making me drink all this water.”. 

“Yeah, that or never come out of the bushes,” Xena joked, dodging it easily when Gabrielle half-heartedly swatted at her. “It’ll help clear the herb out of your system faster. Don’t tell me you’re not feeling better.”

Gabrielle’s response was a sardonic harrumph. “Yeah, well, I’m not prepared to say it’s because of the water.”

“Well, your vocabulary is coming back, so I’ll take that as a positive sign,” Xena teased. “Come on, not far now. You’re sure you don’t want to ride?”

“Your horse still hates me.” Next to Xena, Argo snorted in agreement, and Xena threw her a dirty look. “No, I think I’m safer down here in my condition.” 

“Argo doesn’t hate you - do you, girl?” Xena said to her, sternness under the affection in her voice. Argo wasn’t any help, pulling her head out of Xena’s reach; and Xena gave up on it for the moment. “Someday you two are gonna have to learn to get along.”

“_ I’m _gonna have to learn to get along?” Gabrielle said indignantly. “I hardly think I’m the problem, here. She’s just mad because she was here first.”

Maybe Gabrielle wasn’t completely wrong, but she also wasn’t any help. “Isn’t your head pounding?” Xena questioned innocently, and Gabrielle fell quiet with a huff. 

The huff turned into a grateful, spontaneous hug when they reached the edge of the last village they'd left and Gabrielle realized where they were - “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, muffled by Xena’s shoulder blade - which Xena reciprocated as best as she could, reaching behind her with a laugh. It was a matter of a few more minutes to stable Argo and get themselves a room, and Gabrielle collapsed onto the bed with finality. 

“How’s your head?” Xena asked again, sitting next to her on the edge of the bed. Not for the first time, she felt an urge to smooth back Gabrielle’s hair, and for once she gave into the urge to indulge it. Gabrielle very nearly purred as soon as Xena’s fingers tangled in her soft hair, more red than gold in the final rays of daylight and the candlelight that suffused the darkening room. 

“Better now that you’re doing that,” she said blissfully. Experimentally, Xena let her fingers rub against her skull with more pressure, and Gabrielle moaned. “Why didn’t you just do this before?” 

“Because I had a feeling you wouldn’t have let me stop, and then we wouldn’t have made it here.” 

It was all bluster, of course, but Gabrielle didn’t need to know that Xena’s urge to touch her had only become undeniable once she’d seen her like this, curled up and and ridiculous and so lovely, hovering somewhere between youthful exuberance and blossoming womanhood. 

Gabrielle hummed another contented moan. “You might be right about that,” she admitted, and then, as if she could sense Xena’s creeping realization that she was enjoying this far too much, commanded, “Don’t you dare stop.”

It took Xena all of five seconds to decide to comply, against her better reason.

“Move over, then,” she said; and when Gabrielle didn’t, Xena stopped. 

“Hey!” Gabrielle protested, cracking open one bleary eye.

“Move over and give me some room if you don’t want me to stop,” Xena said more explicitly. It was enough for Gabrielle to haul herself up so that Xena could settle herself comfortably in a seated position against the wall and pillows. Xena rolled her eyes when Gabrielle suddenly turned hesitant. 

“Well, come on,” she said, one hand on the back of Gabrielle’s neck. “You got me right where you want me, dontcha?”

Gabrielle didn’t deny it, and let her head be guided down to rest on Xena’s leg, all tension and doubt bleeding out of her at the first touch of Xena’s fingers in her hair again. 

“So nice,” she mumbled, absently curling a hand just above Xena’s knee.

The straps that made up her skirt had been pushed to the side, and Gabrielle’s breath was warm against the skin of her thigh. Xena smiled wryly to herself. There were certainly worse positions to be in, but she clamped down hard on her own body’s response to it. Attraction and desire certainly weren’t things she’d ever stopped being capable of during the last decade, but the way Gabrielle stirred her heart, sluggish and sweet, was something new and terrifying, like stumbling in a lethargic stupor towards the only source of light in the darkness. 

Xena wasn’t ready to call it love - not yet. But if she had to put a name to it, she thought that it might be something close. 

“Xena?”

Apparently she was more awake than Xena had thought. Gabrielle had turned her head and opened her eyes, unerringly seeking Xena’s face. 

“What is it?” Xena asked, the gentleness in her own voice a surprise even to her.

On Gabrielle’s face was an echo of the astonishment that had briefly paralyzed her when Xena had first discovered her in the cave, drugged out of her mind and into truthfulness; and with a start, Xena realized that she’d been given the key to reading it: _ You are beautiful. _

It wasn’t something she’d been unaware of, and it certainly wasn’t something she’d never been told before; but the wide-eyed wonder behind Gabrielle’s words was something she’d never be able to laugh away. She wondered if Gabrielle had ever started to see that same astonishment reflected back at her from Xena’s face, and if she’d ever figure out how to read it.

“Thank you,” Gabrielle said softly. 

“For what?” Xena replied, just as hushed. 

“Everything,” was the reply. “Being you.”

“Oh, Gabrielle,” Xena said, her heart stumbling, stumbling. “You’ve got me anytime.”


End file.
